One of our clients asked if we could help all 100 attendees at a conference have a fun experience making videos - essentially low production-values educational videos for the client’s new hires. They recognize it’s going to be important to have a video presence if they want to hire the best and brightest. They realize 20-somethings think making videos is creative entertainment.
What a lovely assignment! We had fun doing it. We divided the group into 8 teams of 12. This is actually a pretty common team size for anything but the biggest commercial video productions. It takes a lot of specialists in screenwriting, makeup, lighting, sound and editing to do a project. Few people are well-versed in everything. We found instructors at local tech schools here in Seattle. They were producer-advisors to each of the 8 teams, but team members came up with the concepts, wrote the scripts, and held and operated the gear. Producer’s role was to help the team get past stumbling blocks and dead-ends. In two evenings the teams wrote scripts, created storyboards, and shot their footage. We then edited-out the projects into 3-4 minute projects with titles, music, rolling-credits.
We showed the videos at a wrap-up lunch for the attendees, and they were amazed and amused (howls of laughter and applause) to see what they had created.
The client wants 3 more! Yea!
Our new Drupal website on team-building video creation:
www.vidteams.com
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June 24th, 2008 at 1:38 pm
It sounds like you’ve moved the ball a little bit on the typical YouTube level of video, and didn’t even include one of the three common video bits. (Groin shot, toilet surprise, or solid object impact.)
It does sound as though you took some very structured folks (auditors) and introduced them to a very structured process (storyboards, scripting, etc.) What might happen if you rolled the dice by having them merely shoot images/sequences about a topic?
>>Meeting a new client
>>Prepping for a presentation
>>Managing up
>>Career ending incidents
…and then you edited those together, added some titles and music, and produced one more lengthy story.
Just stirring the pot, I remain, your humble servant.